


i think this year i'm gonna be mean

by Princex_N



Category: Marble Hornets
Genre: (what if you tenderly bandaged my injury.... and we were both ND men??), ADHD Brian Thomas, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Autistic Jay Merrick, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Light Angst, M/M, Neurodiversity, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-05
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:22:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23487508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Princex_N/pseuds/Princex_N
Summary: Jay has a theory, and the seeming absurdity of it isn't going to be enough to keep him from doing something impulsive.Or, an AU where Jay and Hoody actually get along
Relationships: Jay Merrick & Brian Thomas, Jay Merrick/Brian Thomas
Comments: 5
Kudos: 66





	i think this year i'm gonna be mean

**Author's Note:**

> title from [cavetown's boys will be bugs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uREGk0fT0GQ)
> 
> [I made this headcanon post](https://princex-n.tumblr.com/post/613212171619483648/fuck-it-headcanons-post) and then couldn't stop thinking about brian and jay, so I had to write this fic too

Jay doesn't know if he's right. He's pretty sure that there's no way that he's right. There's really no way in hell that he's right. 

And yet. 

It's been a while since he's noticed the totheark videos being posted in response to the entries he's been making. He hadn't thought much of them at first, but he'd caught on quickly to the fact that he _should_ be. The codes aren't that complex to break, he doesn't think, but it had helped that he was already kind of familiar with them. 

Then he'd taken a moment to ponder _why_ he was familiar with them, and had come to a quick conclusion that he's having trouble convincing himself makes any sense. Because there is _no way_ that Brian Thomas from college is the person behind these videos. 

Right?

It doesn't seem to make any sense, but Occam's Razor is a thing for a reason, isn't it? If all of this traces back to college, to Alex and the filming of that shitty little student film, and Jay has already gotten back into contact with Tim, is the possibility that Brian is also somehow involved really that far-fetched? Especially since Jay has already seen proof that whoever is behind totheark has their own footage from the filming? 

At the same time, it doesn't seem possible, or at the very least incredibly unlikely. Jay remembers Brian pretty well, the two of them had gotten along decently despite Jay's initial hesitation. Brian had always seemed to exude a cool and collected energy, and Jay was well-used to being the odd man out by virtue of his 'weird intensity' and the general lack of decent social skills. He'd already been resigned to having to tolerate the moderate discomfort other people seemed to harbor around him by the time Alex had introduced them, but Brian hadn't seemed to notice that Jay was different at all.

It was a couple of days later during an initial script reading, when Jay had seen Brian talking excitedly to his friend Tim while bouncing on his toes - fingers wiggling as he seemed entirely oblivious to the tolerant bewilderment Tim seemed to be listening with, that Jay _got_ it.

He and Brian had gotten along, took turns chattering to each other about whatever topic their brains had a choke-hold on when no one else had the patience to listen to them. Brian's uninhibited and self-assured movements had made it easy for Jay to feel more comfortable sliding by with his subtler motions. Jay's single-minded focus had been a good counterbalance to Brian's fluttering attention span. It had been nice, to understand someone for once, even if they weren't exactly the same. 

But this cryptic and ominous youtuber doesn't seem to match anything of what Jay remembers of Brian at all. And yet, Jay knows exactly how to crack the codes in the videos because he can still remember the way Brian had lit up when Jay told him that he was willing to let Brian teach him all the codes he had spent the weekend reading about. 

Occam's Razor, right? And hadn't Jay wanted to track down Brian again _anyway_ to try and dig for more answers about Alex? 

With that in mind, Jay pulls open his phone's contact list and tries to tell himself that he's not being completely ridiculous. 

(It takes a lot of holding onto, because Jay from college had apparently never heard of using last names or titles in his contact list and there are several Brian's listed - most of them probably short-term partners for group projects or coworkers from any number of shitty retail jobs. Each time he calls someone who clearly doesn't remember who he is or has a dead number, Jay has to re-convince himself that this makes sense all over again before he can click on the next name.)

"Jay?" someone finally answers with, and a rush of relief and nostalgia washes over him at the voice he recognizes. 

"Hey, Brian," Jay says, and then realizes that in the anxiety of trying to figure out if he was really going through with this he'd forgotten to actually script anything for if the right Brian answered the phone. "Uh," he flounders, listening to the quiet static silence on the other side of the line. "Do you still do code breaking?" tumbles out of his mouth, and his whole face scrunches into a wince. 

It's quiet for a long moment, and Jay thinks of the awkward tension in Tim's face when Jay had fucked _that_ up, and worries that he's scrambled his chances before he'd even gotten started when Brian finally lets out a tired sounding laugh. "You figured that out a lot sooner than I'd hoped you would," he says, and relief and confusion start to war in Jay's head. "What gave me away?" 

"Mm," Jay hums, rubbing his thumb and forefinger together while he tries to think through the surprise of actually being _right_. "I remembered that you were the one who gave me a crash course in this stuff when you got obsessed in college." 

Brian laughs again, low and a little raspy instead of the bright noise that Jay remembers. "I'd say that's ridiculous," he says, "but I'm the one who still uses your impromptu editing lessons."

He sighs, and Jay rubs his fingers together and waits. "I'm guessing you have questions for me like you did with Tim." There's a fondness there when he says Tim's name, despite Tim's claims that they hadn't spoken in a while. Jay briefly wonders if Brian says _his_ name anything like that still, and then forcibly reminds himself that they're having this conversation in response to Brian acting like a cryptic freak on the internet in response to Jay's newfound obsession with a badly rendered horror movie monster, and tells himself to fuck off. 

"Yeah, I'd say I have a few," Jay replies, keeping the dry tone to his voice light, like he can keep Brian from hanging up and running off just by acting like this is totally normal somehow. 

(Masking can come in handy for stuff other than trying to convince some HR employee that you're not 'too weird' to work as a cashier sometimes, it turns out.) 

"Well, I-," Brian stops talking so quickly that Jay thinks the call has disconnected entirely for a moment. Then he hears Brian curse under his breath, low and serious, and a fission of tension shoots up Jay's spine. "Where are you?" Brian asks after a moment, voice a harsh whisper Jay can only barely hear over the ambient roar of the phone.

"Uh, my apartment," Jay says, and then cuts himself off before he spills anything else, unsure if he _actually_ wants to give Brian - _totheark_ \- his current location. "Why?" 

"Do you have a first aid kit?" is what he gets instead of an answer. 

"Yeah? A small one," Jay answers, because he might as well at this point. "Are you hurt?" 

"I might be in a little bit," Brian says, still speaking impossibly softly. Jay hears something thud heavily in the background. "Alex just broke into my house." 

"Alex?" Jay asks, eager, and then the rest of that sentence processes. "Wait, what?" 

"Don't go anywhere," Brian orders - and it _is_ an order, stern and demanding - "Just-."

"Don't think I can't _hear_ you," Jay hears distantly, and it _is_ Alex, loud and angry, and Brian rasps a noise that might be a growl or might be a laugh. 

"Don't go anywhere," he says again, right before the unmistakable sound of a gunshot has Jay's phone startling away from his ear just as the line goes dead. 

What the fuck is Jay supposed to do with all that? Alex is apparently in town (did he come back? Or never actually leave in the first place?), breaking into Brian's house, and one or both of them is armed with a _gun_. Jay didn't even manage to give Brian his address, and Brian - a man he hasn't spoken to in years and who might have a gun and who has definitely been acting vaguely threatening for a while - didn't seem bothered by that at all. 

What the fuck. 

He keeps his phone in hand as he goes to dig under his bathroom sink for the old first aid kit he thinks should be there, and then tries to decide if he has anywhere near the kind of supplies needed to handle a potential gunshot wound. While looking up how to treat a gunshot wound after he realizes that he doesn't even know what he'd need, he gets a notification that totheark has uploaded a new video. 

Brian can't possibly be the one uploading "Advocate", unless the phone call was some elaborate prank or misdirection. The footage _is_ of Brian though, and pairing that with the timer and the title, Jay can't help but wonder if this is someone trying to tell him that Brian's not safe. 

"Yeah, I know," Jay mutters aloud, checking his phone anxiously, not sure how to confront the idea that there _is_ more than one person running this creepy little channel. He shelves the thought, and refrains from adding any in-depth commentary to his twitter update. 

(Alex's reappearance doesn't feel good at _all_ , even if the gunshot wasn't real or something, and Jay isn't sure he likes the idea of publicly broadcasting that he's about to invite a potential member of totheark inside his apartment. Not least because he has no idea how to explain this to all the strangers who follow him to try and help. Plus, if Alex _had_ broken into Brian's house, Jay doesn't think that drawing him over to Jay's place is a smart move.) 

It takes almost an hour before Jay finally hears the knocking on his door, and he still manages to feel wildly unprepared when he glances out and sees Brian leaning heavily on the door frame, wearing an old hoodie Jay recognizes (Brian had let him wear it once, it fit snugly on Jay instead of a little big like it does on Brian, but it was comfortable, especially in the sudden odd chill of Alex's house. Jay wants to strangle himself for thinking about this now). 

Even though he'd been the one to knock, even though he's the one on Jay's doorstep (somehow), Brian still startles and bares his teeth a little when Jay opens the door. One of his legs buckles a bit, and Jay hurries to try and steady him. "Are you okay?" he asks, instead of 'how did you know where I live', trying not to yelp at the dark brown stain on Brian's jeans. 

"I'm great," Brian retorts, flinching away from Jay's hands before relenting to the help.

It's not exactly the reunion Jay had been imagining, having to help the shorter man over to the couch and kicking clothes off of it onto the floor (at least it's hard to feel embarrassed about the state of this place in the face of the anxiety over Brian's bleeding leg). Jay leans over to his desk to grab the first aid kit, sits on the ottoman and reaches for Brian's leg, only to have it clumsily pulled out of his reach. "I think it just grazed me," Brian says, defensive even though _he'd_ been the one who asked about the first aid kit in the first place. 

"That doesn't mean you ignore it," Jay snaps back, refusing to relent until Brian has his jeans tugged down and his leg slung across Jay's lap, giving him decent access to actually work with. The weight is familiar - Brian had always been way more tactile than Jay was, but Jay had gotten used to Brian's little invasions of his space - leaning up against each other's sides, his legs or occasionally his whole body in Jay's lap, the nudge of shoulders as Brian laughed. Distantly, over the little sparks of sensation in his hands as he works, Jay wonders if college was the last time he'd had someone who touched him like that.

Brian holds himself rigid still as Jay addresses the wound as best as his hesitant research can allow. He hisses as Jay pours disinfectant over it unsympathetically, practically growling as Jay wipes blood out of the way and prods carefully at the edges to try and gauge how deep it is - a clumsy attempt to figure out whether he needs to force them to a hospital. Still, he quietly complies to Jay's manhandling as he wraps it up as tight as he's comfortable with. His muscles bunch and tense under Jay's fingers, like he's one wrong move away from bolting entirely, but when Jay declares it good enough and lets his fingers linger on the texture of the bandage and the heat of his skin, Brian doesn't pull his leg away. 

"Do you want to explain?" Jay asks, watching the blood clinging to his fingers stain faintly against the outside of the wrappings. "Or do you need to rest first?" 

Brian didn't tend to lose words as often as he tended to lose everything else, but Jay remembers the time Brian had turned up to a day of filming - wide-eyed and shaky and so panicked he couldn't speak, concerning enough that even Alex's shit attitude had faded in the face of it. He never had explained what had prompted that, Jay realizes now. 

"Which part do you want to hear first?" Brian asks, and Jay supposes that's answer enough. 

"What's going on with Alex?" he asks, because that's the crux of this whole thing, isn't it? Alex. The two of them had never gotten particularly close during the filming itself, but now with the tapes Jay has been feeling a strange sense of solidarity - seen and understood. But Alex's appearance over the phone throws a wrench in Jay's understanding of where they stand with each other, where Alex is standing in the grand scheme of this whole mess in the first place. 

Brian's lips curl back in a snarl - a sound that seems more animal than human, and Jay hardly has the time to be taken aback by that before Brian is talking rapid fire, all the intensity of his old info-dumping with none of the light enthusiasm. 

"He's so good at playing the fucking victim, isn't he," Brian snaps. "Like he's not the one who _caused_ all this shit, not the one who broke everything and everyone." Brian laughs, but no part of it sounds humored. "He said we had filming, and I wake up on the ground with him _gone_ and nearly lose my mind trying to find him, and then _that thing_ shows up, and Alex _left me there for it_." 

He sounds angry, Jay recognizes, but more than that he sounds betrayed - a sharp edge to his voice that sounds wounded and terrified in a way that feels fresh instead of the years old it should be. Jay doesn't really understand what Brian is trying to explain, sentence fragments that connect for him in a way Jay can't see yet, but what he does understand still surprises him. Brian and Alex had been friends, Jay remembers, _really_ good ones. Before Alex had started getting angry and insufferable, people liked him, but they all sometimes thought he was a little weird and pretentious (Jay included, though he's aware of the irony) - Brian had always seemed like the only one who seemingly adored those parts of Alex instead of just tolerating them. 

Now that fondness is gone, and Jay can't even hear a remnant of it in the animal growl of Brian's raspy voice. There's only anger, and Jay isn't sure he understands, not really. There are still too many tapes to go through, too many different ways to interpret the mangled mess of Brian's explanation, but it doesn't feel biased, not entirely at least. After all, Brian is the one whose house was broken into, the one slumped in Jay's shitty armchair, shaking from the adrenaline come down with a bullet wound in his leg. Jay isn't sure he understands _why_ there are sides, or why the sides are there in the first place, but he thinks he knows which side he might be on. 

"Okay," he says, shelving all of his questions until he can figure out how to phrase them. "So what do we do next?" 

Brian looks at him, eyes sleepy and calculating, and Jay fights the itch behind his eyes that makes him want to look away. He doesn't quite meet Brian's gaze, but he doesn't cave underneath it, trying to figure out exactly what the other man is looking for. 

"Seems like there are a couple of people you might need to meet," Brian finally says, satisfied with whatever it is he's found, and the smile he gives Jay feels all predator. 

Jay surprises himself by smiling back. 

**Author's Note:**

> brian was a lil gay with all of his college friends and we love him for it. jay is still a gay disaster and we love him for that too
> 
> [my tumblr](http://www.princex-n.tumblr.com)


End file.
